B Matt 54348Luke 62728 3236

More striking still is the passage preserved in the Sermon on the Mount/Plain:

Matt. 5.43-48

Luke 6.27-28, 32-36

43 You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy'. 44 But I sav to Love vour enemies

27 But I say to you that Love vour enemies, do good to those

and prav for those who persecute vou, 45 so that vou may be sons of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if vou love those who love vou. what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

48 Therefore, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, prav for those who abuse vou.

32 And if vou love those who love vou. what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to vou? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Here again there is good evidence that the teaching was heard and recycled in subsequent paraenesis: Rom. 12.14 and Did. 1.3 both clearly echo the Lukan

190. 'Jesus' concern is not a vague love for the whole world, which can so easily become sentimental illusion' (Schrage, Ethics 79).

192. Note also Bultmann's observations: 'the neighbour is not a sort of tool by means of which I practise the love of God'; 'only if love is thought of as an emotion is it meaningless to command love; the command of love shows that love is understood as an attitude of the will' (Jesus and the Word 115, 118); 'the example of the merciful Samaritan shows that a man can know and must know what he has to do when he sees his neighbour in need of his help' (Theology 1.19; similarly 24).

form of the saying, and the same teaching seems to have influenced the formulation of 1 Cor. 4.12 and 1 Pet. 3.9.193 It is Jesus, then, who is recalled in the tradition (Q?), drawn on and elaborated by Matthew and Luke, as extending the love command to a hitherto unheard-of application.194 No more here than before is there any cause to attribute such teaching to some unknown disciple of immense influence.195 It is because it was Jesus who is remembered as so teaching, and probably only because it was him, that the teaching has been served.196 In this instance above all we catch a glimpse of how radically Jesus was prepared to press a different motivation and ideal for community and for discipleship under pressure. And not just as an individualistic ethic,197 but as a breaking through of a concept of neighbour love determined primarily by covenant faithfulness.198 Love should be the first and the final criterion for conduct

193. Details in my Romans 745. Note also P.Oxy. 1224 (Aland, Synopsis 84). Further echoes and allusions, as well as OT anticipations, are suggested by Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.551-53, though they have no doubt that 'Love your enemies' was 'undoubtedly the invention of Jesus' own mind' (552). See also J. Piper, 'Love your Enemies': Jesus'Love Command in the Synoptic Gospels and the Early Christian Paraenesis (SNTSMS 38; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1979) 19-65; Fitzmyer, Luke 637-38; Guelich, Sermon on the Mount 224-29, 252-55; McKnight, New Vision 206-10, 218-24.

194. It is frequently noted that the covenanters were bidden to 'hate all the sons of darkness' (1QS 1.10-11) (e.g., Furnish, Love Command46-47; Charlesworth, Jesus 74; further details in Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.549-50). But W. Klassen suggests that the double counsel, 'Be good to (or love) your friends and hate your enemies', was widespread in the ancient world, so that it is unnecessary to look for a specific reference ('"Love Your Enemies": Some Reflections on the Current Status of Research', in W. M. Swartley, ed., The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament [Louisville: Westminster, 1992] 1-31 [here 12]). See further Betz, Sermon on the Mount 301-13.

195. The Jesus Seminar had no doubts that 'Love your enemies' is close to the heart of Jesus' teaching (as also Bultmann, History 105) and were positive in their judgment regarding Matt. 5.45b-46/Luke 6.32, but returned a negative verdict on Matt. 5.44b/Luke 6.28, despite the parallels in Romans and Didache (Funk, Five Gospels 145-47, 291-97). Ludemann is even more robust in his affirmation of the authenticity of Matt. 5.44a, since 'it was evaded in primitive Christianity' (Jesus 144). See also Holmen, Jesus 258-72. The nearest parallel outside Jewish tradition is Epictetus 3.22.53-54: the Cynic 'must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he is being flogged he must love those who flog him . . less close parallels in Downing, Christ and the Cynics 23-25; Vaage, Galilean Upstarts47-50.

196. 'It is Jesus' commandment to love the enemy which most of all sets his ethic of love apart from other "love ethics" of antiquity' (Furnish, Love Command 66).

197. 'Love of enemies is not the high point of universal love of humanity, but the high point of overcoming of self, the surrender of one's own claim' (Bultmann, Jesus and the Word 112).

198. Jesus 'brings together the terms love and enemy not to expand the circle of those whom one is to love, but to move away from that kind of thinking to a totally new orientation of love' — so Becker, Jesus 255, but he presses this over-dialectically (and sermonically) into a and for all social relationships. The teaching which Matthew has put immediately prior to this under the preceding antithesis illustrates the outworking of such an attitude and priority (Matt. 5.38-42/Luke 6.29-30).199 For it urges not simply non-retaliation, but a positive outgoing generosity ('let him have your cloak also; go with him a second [mile])'.200 This is how love responds to provocation.201

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